The Scoop Blog

The fall of 2007 proved to be pretty busy time for Jerry Jones and his Dallas Cowboys. He was hashing out the seat licensing options to pay for the billion-dollar-plus stadium, predicting his Super Bowl would set attendance records and being declared by Forbes magazine as the most valuable sports franchise in the world.

That fall was also when a misunderstanding led to the Cowboys losing out on the coveted Cowboys.com domain name in an auction, which came back to haunt them this week when Cowboys.com launched as a gay and straight cowboys dating website after spending the past five years in hibernation. Yee-haw!

Despite being declared the most valuable team in the world, Jones and his organization was bucked off the domain bronco in 2007 because of a price misunderstanding during an auction for the domain. DomainNameNews reports a Dallas Cowboys representative had the winning bid of “275″ in an auction for the domain in October 2007. But unknown to the winning bidder, that bid was in thousands and not singles.

The Cowboys balked at the high price tag and the domain was put up for auction again, which was won by a group led by Eric Rice for $370,000, DomainNameNews also reported.

With the announced launch of Cowboys.com, Jerry and company face a pesky problem. For much of the past five years, Cowboys.com pointed to a generic holder page, which could be interpreted as no harm, no foul for fans accidentally stumbling upon it. Now it displays significantly different content, which may lead the team to do some damage control. And this isn’t the first time the Cowboys have been scrambling over a domain quandary — the team accidentally let their real domain expire two years ago after a Sunday night blowout to the Packers.

“In understanding the traffic base, tens of thousands of visitors per month come to the website looking for a variety of things, dating is one of the most sought after searches. To finally be able to serve these visitors needs is a great opportunity,” said Darren Cleveland, president of the current ownership group.